The moment Pluto was mentioned, Xiao's thoughts immediately drifted to Water Seven, far across the seas.
More precisely—to Franky.
Compared to the completed Ancient Weapon itself, Xiao was far more interested in something else:
the blueprints.
A battleship, no matter how powerful, was still just an external tool.
What truly mattered was the knowledge behind it—the shipbuilding principles, the engineering philosophy, the technological accumulation of the ancient civilization that had once stood at the summit of the world.
That was the real treasure.
As for the legendary claim of "one shot, one island"?
Xiao snorted inwardly.
With his current strength, a single punch at full power could sink far more than an island. Even continents were not beyond consideration.
Compared to that, Pluto's raw destructive output held little appeal.
What mattered was efficiency.
If he seized the finished battleship, he would still need to spend enormous time dismantling it, reverse-engineering every component, and reconstructing the underlying principles from scratch.
But if he obtained the blueprints, he could build Pluto himself—step by step—absorbing every piece of technology during the construction process.
Only then would that power truly become his.
After all, the ancient civilization hadn't possessed only Pluto.
There had been Uranus, Poseidon, genetic engineering, even technologies bordering on immortality.
And yet?
They were still annihilated.
Their achievements stolen.
Their history erased.
Their legacy trampled beneath the boots of the Celestial Dragons.
Now, in the entire world, there remained only a single being capable of reading that lost language.
Under Xiao's will, cyber aura surged silently through Water Seven.
In the depths of the ship-breaking yard, Franky—fast asleep amid scrap metal—was enveloped in a tide of invisible data.
In less than a second, the cyber aura infiltrated every mechanical structure within his body.
His prosthetics were overwritten.
Replaced.
Seamlessly.
Only then did Xiao notice something interesting.
Compared to humans of the cyberpunk world, humans of the pirate world resisted cyber infiltration far more fiercely.
Their cells were stronger.
Their genetic chains denser.
Their biological defenses far more robust.
This innate resilience triggered an instinctive immune response, forcibly rejecting deeper invasion.
As a result, the cyber aura could fully dominate Franky's mechanical components, but could not directly overwrite his biological systems.
Fortunately, Franky was only a low-grade cyborg.
Against true cyber intrusion, his defenses were laughably insufficient.
In a cyberpunk world, there would be energy shields, electromagnetic countermeasures, layered security protocols.
But in this technologically backward pirate world?
Mechanical prosthetics were naked targets.
Franky never even realized that his body had already changed.
By the time his full transformation schematics appeared clearly before Xiao's eyes, Franky was still sleeping soundly.
To be blunt—
Franky's cybernetic modifications were crude.
Painfully so.
Aside from the power core in his body, almost everything else was… primitive.
How primitive?
Every weapon system relied on physical buttons.
No neural interface.
No thought-based activation.
No direct mental control.
It was the equivalent of grafting a cannon onto a limb and wiring it to a switch.
The only difference was that Franky used guns instead of axes—and added more buttons.
Even worse, his prosthetics weren't linked to his nervous system at all.
They relied entirely on brute physical strength.
Movement programs and pressure sensors detected muscle force, translated that into rough guidance, and then the internal power furnace drove the machinery into action.
Control was achieved not through precision interfaces, but through sheer bodily force.
In truth, this level of prosthetic technology could have been built in modern pre-collapse Earth.
The real challenge wasn't the machinery—it was the human body.
Rejection reactions.
Insufficient muscle strength.
Structural instability.
In other words, Franky's achievement wasn't technological elegance.
It was brute-force ingenuity.
A miracle created by raw physical power.
Xiao could only sigh.
A strong body really does let you do whatever you want.
If someone in the cyberpunk world tried installing this kind of prosthetic system, their fragile physique wouldn't last minutes.
They wouldn't be running.
They wouldn't even be standing.
They'd collapse under the weight like scrap metal.
That said, Xiao understood Franky.
For someone who had never received formal education, who had learned everything by dismantling ships with his own hands, Franky was undeniably a genius.
And his work wasn't worthless.
In fact, his greatest achievement lay in a single component:
the power furnace.
Franky had almost completely hollowed out his chest and abdomen.
In their place, he created a dual-layer energy system.
The lower chamber functioned as an energy storage bay—an open, modular reservoir for fuel intake.
Above it, where the heart once lay, was the power furnace, responsible for distributing energy to every prosthetic component in his body.
And it was here that Xiao found what he came for.
Hidden within Franky's possession—yellowed, worn by time—the Pluto blueprints emerged.
Cyber aura immediately digitized them, recording every line, annotation, and structure into a secure data archive.
Deciphering Pluto's full design would take time.
So Xiao turned his attention back to Franky's power system.
And what he discovered made even him pause.
Franky's power furnace… ran on cola.
Not high-grade fuel.
Not refined energy compounds.
Not something like CHOOH2.
Just… cola.
A drink that cost thirty beli on the street.
Even more absurdly—
Almost any beverage could be used as fuel.
Juice.
Soda.
Random drinks from the market.
They would all generate energy.
The only downside?
If it wasn't cola, Franky's personality would temporarily malfunction, rendering him unable to fight properly.
In Xiao's eyes—
That wasn't a flaw.
That was madness.
And brilliance.
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